Ringside at boxing's production of the year and maybe — just maybe, if we want it badly enough — a prelude to the best battle ever

LAS VEGAS — So there was the boy Justin Bieber, side-stepping his way toward the ring alongside the nutjob Floyd Mayweather Jr., and no one really knew what he was doing there yet. It was the biggest fight of the year, and Lil Wayne and 50 Cent were there, too, but it was Saturday night at the MGM Grand, and who needs an 18-year-old human shield when you're the self-anointed best boxer of all time, when you're not even afraid of going to jail next month? And anyway the boy looked like he was a little upset with the whole experiment. Like a sucker.

But it sort of worked, this mysterious plan. The boos that always come at the undefeated superwelterweight at the beginning were less so, and by the end he was blowing kisses into the rafters and he was still undefeated, too. In between: helluva fight. Some right hooks to the face — never the more dangerous left hook — because, he said, he endures the pain to help people feel better, so they can escape their own problems. In Floyd Mayweather's America, we are all suckers.

Halfway through, the Puerto Rican star Miguel Cotto flicked two jabs at the man they call Money. Blood. Mayweather quite literally laughed the stains away, but the people started to wonder: If he finally loses, that Manny Pacquiao fight finally might happen, too; a broken ego means a date with the other best boxer in the world. But that would be getting ahead of ourselves, because here was Mayweather at his most desperate — to be liked, to almost not win — desperate enough to go toe-to-toe for twelve against a guy who twenty-four hours earlier at Wolfgang Puck's place in the casino was sitting next to me eating organic chicken and drinking a half-decent glass of red wine. He had never taken punches like this, the undefeated champion, never really played defense, even. Mayweather might be the best boxer in the world, but he hates to get in a fight. But he's good at that, too.

So he threw it all away, and for the first time since he fought Oscar De La Hoya five years ago, Floyd Mayweather showed his vulnerability — instead of using his feet to dance away punches, he spent a lot of Saturday evening with his back to the ropes, taking shots. "I could have boxed on the outside," he would say later, "but I wanted to give the people a battle." Which is something Manny Pacquiao would usually say, and so they actually cheered for him for the first time. Mayweather deflected punches by angling his body and his ridiculous red-leather trunks, and he changed the details every round, and it was maybe the best title fight in a long time. The judges were unanimous, if not the crowd, but there was Money Mayweather, winner of something called the WBA and WBC diamond superwelterweight title, looking almost small, waiting for love. And it was almost there.

He might say racist things, homophobic things. He apparently sent someone to buy $20,000 in lottery tickets the other day even though he has made something like $230 million in these 43 straight wins now. And he is definitely going to a Nevada prison on June 1 after pleading guilty to beating up his ex-girlfriend while their kids watched. But they cheered for Mayweather like they cheer for Pacquiao, and they cheered when he said he was ready for Pacquiao, too, maybe: "I wanted to fight Pacquiao this fight, but I couldn't make it happen." His win won't exactly help set up the bout the people really want, of course, and everyone knew that, too.

What no one really knew was that Money had lured them in. He usually wears a nice suit after fights, but on Saturday it was trackpants and a MAYWEATHER PRODUCTIONS jacket, the better to match his bloated face. "Usually I don't have any bumps and bruises," he said. "Tonight I do." Mayweather talked of retirement, because Mayweather is both the craziest and the most well-known American in this sport, and he has no obvious heir, and that might scare us into liking him even more. There was the champion, standing, looking a little frail for once, actually — like maybe Manny Pacquiao was the one guy who could beat him, just maybe, because Pacquiao had beaten Cotto, too — and he told the people that quitting wasn't so out of the question, and 50 Cent, his best friend, nodded, and he told them he was getting ready for jail because there is "no one out there for me to fight."

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